[1/28 at 4pm] Nicole Furtado - Ancestral Algorithms: Indigenous Virtual Realities & the Ethics of AI

[Devina Martinez]

Creative Technologies & Porter College present a guest lecture by Nicole Furtado as part of Creative Interventions: A Colloquium in Contemporary Media.

Ancestral Algorithms: Indigenous Virtual Realities & the Ethics of AI

This talk explores how Indigenous analytic and ancestral technologies, rooted in technē as craft, knowledge, and skilled practice, inform contemporary digital forms such as Virtual Reality and AI. It traces how ancestral memory is transferred, adapted, and sustained across generations through decolonial and anti-colonial frameworks, while critically engaging both the generative possibilities and the structural pitfalls of digital technologies as they shape relational, technological futures.

Dr. Nicole Kuʻuleinapuananiolikoʻawapuhimelemeleolani Furtado is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the History of Art and Visual Culture department. Her research builds on the methodology of moʻolelo, or Kānaka Maoli storytelling, as a way to (re)imagine Indigenous futurities that move us beyond a “here-and-now” temporality and that which supports critical fabulations of Native relationality. Her work aims at centering how Indigenous digital arts restore kinship relations, develop land-based pedagogies that challenge the settler commercialization of land and landscapes, and emphasize the need for ethical networks of relations for how we encounter social technologies into the future. 

Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Time: 4 - 5:35pm PST
Location: Online via Zoom

Event poster
View this event on our website

RSVP HERE